Although the term “psychogeography” was not formally recognized until the early 1950s, the idea itself appeared much earlier in literary works such as the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe and William Blake. Of particular importance are the autobiographical writings of Thomas De Quincey, especially Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
“Sometimes, when I try to find my way home by following the principles of navigation fixing my gaze on the North Star and aspiring toward the northwest rather than traversing all the alleys and paths I had taken on my initial journey from home, I suddenly encounter complex, intertwined lanes, exceedingly obscure entrances, and bewildering streets without passageways. I imagine that any of these would naturally confuse the minds of cab drivers and porters (that is, anyone whose profession requires knowing the streets of London by heart). At times, I nearly believed that I must be the first explorer of those lands, and even doubted whether anyone had ever recorded those alleyways on London’s maps before.”
De Quincey explains how he guided himself home by the stars, and because he lacked any real knowledge of celestial navigation, he found himself in unfamiliar areas, exploring what he believed to be paths unknown even to maps rediscovering the city as though seeing it with new eyes.
De Quincey portrays psychogeography as a privileged act: not everyone can wander the streets and uncover their secrets unless they possess sufficient time and financial means. The political motivation behind psychogeography became more explicit in the 1950s with the emergence of the Situationist movement. The Situationists fiercely opposed what they called “commodity fetishism” and invested in an anarchic notion of play as a way to challenge the capitalist system. One such playful practice was psychogeography. Typical psychogeographic exercises included using maps of different cities to navigate one’s own mental maps, cutting up maps and rearranging them, and practicing unplanned wandering or drifting through urban spaces.
But what significance does psychogeography hold today? With the growing reliance on GPS systems and Google Maps, we seem to have become completely disconnected from one another. The digital world now rests at our fingertips, while the physical world takes a back seat.
Journalist Will Self, who identifies himself as a psychogeographer, describes this as an alienation from “the material realities of our cities” an idea with profound social and political implications, especially for those living in large urban centers.
Consider the individual’s dependence on systems outside their own mind or body to navigate space for example, not knowing how they reached their destination even on a familiar route because they relied entirely on GPS. Guy Debord goes further, suggesting that cities are nothing more than capitalist blueprints designed to accommodate the growing sale of cars and to exploit the need to travel from point A to point B. As a result, our increasing inability to move freely and consciously within our surroundings contributes to the internalization of capitalist culture and its dominance over us.
Walking, too, has gendered effects. In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000), Rebecca Solnit writes about walking in San Francisco:
“I was given advice to stay home at night, to wear loose clothing, to cover my hair or cut it, to try to look like men, to move to an expensive neighborhood, to take taxis, to buy a car, to travel in groups, to have a man accompany me all modern versions of Greek walls and Assyrian veils.”
She goes on to assert that “many women have grown up perfectly adept at knowing that the location they choose for their lives is more conservative and tribal, without knowing why—because their desire to walk alone had been extinguished within them.”
From the book Under the Asphalt, the Beach
Sociology
Edited by: Ahmed El-Sorougy
Publisher: Elles Publishing House
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